Tag Archives: misc makes

This is just a quick post to explain why there have been no posts recently.

In September I started training to become a secondary school* science teacher. The course is as time-consuming as it is rewarding, leaving me with little ‘spare’ time to knit, blog, read books not on reading list, see friends, talk to family or do housework (ok no change there for the last one).

But knitting time can be justified if it’s spent making teaching aids …

And yes my classes did love the knitted fossils and mirco-organisms. I see the time spent making them an investment – hopefully I’m going to be teaching for lots of years so they will get a lot of use. Now I’m off to look for a mole pattern ….

Can’t remember whether I’ve mentioned it here before, but for the past couple of years I’ve been involved with Girl Guiding. Or rather re-involved – I was a Brownie & a Guide myself, and now its fun to help give girls the chance to take part in the fun experiences & opportunities Guiding can provide.

So far I have failed to get any of our girls interested in learning to knit, although I am hoping to run a spinning session at camp next year (I did have to explain to someone that it’s this kind of spinning not that kind of spinning – I prefer to do my cycling out in the fresh air). But of coure I take my knitting along to do in rare quiet moments in meetings, and have made some “Guidey knits” this year.

Emergency Poppy

Guides & Scouts go to church parade for Remembrance Sunday. I know that we had at least two poppies in the house but on the night before church parade I could only find one. Son needed that to pin on his Scout shirt, luckily I managed to find this pattern and crochet one for myself.ravlery project page

Bear Sock

TREFOIL ILLUSION SCARF

I love illusion knitting, so this was was a perfect knit for our Unit Leader & my leadership mentor. The pattern was written by a Brownie leader to raise funds for her unit, so do get one if you have Guides to knit for.ravelry project page

For the past two years my bff has been threatening to teach me to spin. I couldn’t risk letting her – there was no way I would ever graduate if I got another fibery habit. But having completed the final course for my degree in October, I found a spindle in my Christmas stocking

along with a pair of hand carders and some merino tops. So I spent Christmas day (and many days thereafter) playing with my presents, and eventually (and thanks to various online tutorials and videos), made yarn!

I have already managed to make Real Yarn, plied and everything. All the tutorials caution new spinners to make sure to add enough twist; I think I took this too much to heart and ended up with very twisty yarn. But it’s still yarn, and I think I have enough of the green merino for fingerless gloves.
So mostly I have been spinning since Christmas, not much knitting except for sshhh sooper seekrit project for Purl City Yarns design contest).

I do love this pattern, it was just a bad decision to make a single bed sized blanket in dk yarn. If I ever decided to make another blanket, remind me not to use anything thinner than aran weight. Oh except for the sock yarn squares blanket but that is a loooong term project.

Anyway I had much of the blue yarns left over so I made son a matching Manchester City cushion cover. The pattern for a patchwork cushion is from a book, and I used Rhonda White‘s charts for the letters.pattern: Patchwork Cushion by Jane Crowfoot; letters charted by Rhonda White; yarn: Creative Yarns Style DK; needles: 4 mm

Looking at the flickr bar on the right, I see that all my recent projects have been blue. And so is my main WiP, a lacy(ish) jumper in bamboo tape which I am making up as a I go along based on a jumper I already have.
It’s been a bit stop-start because I don’t always feel up to calculating shapings, so I put it aside and knit something with a pattern instead. It’s not the actual calculations that put me off but the decision making process. With a pattern, someone else has decided where to place the sleeves and what size the neck should be and so on, so I can blame them if I don’t like the end result. But with this jumper I will only have myself to blame. Eep.

I took my chemistry-with-hard-sums exam last week. Now I have no studying for a couple of months, until my next course starts in February (although I may do a little light reading in preparation for it). Even though my chemistry studies are over for this year, I still have plenty of new things to learn. I’ve cast on for my bountiful bohus cardigan. This features a couple of techniques I’ve not done before – short row shaping and steeks.

I have done short rows before, but not for shaping a garment. The pattern does give some shapings but I’m going to recalculate my own, as well as tweaking other parts of the shaping, using my hard-won mad algebra skillz. If I can apply the steady state approximation and understand the Langmuir adsorption isotherm then I can damn well work out where to put a couple of bust darts.

Steeks, though! Steeks are a different story. You want me to cut my knitting? I think I’d rather derive some more kinetic equations, thanks. Cut. My. Knitting! ? This is terrifying. But I know lots of knitters who have done it and survived, and they assure me it’s not that difficult but even so, I’m scared. But ’tis a long way off yet. I have started with the sleeves, by way of checking my tension calculations (my yarn is knitting up looser than the pattern so I am following the instructions for a smaller size). I’ve made the sleeves narrower than the pattern has them – I already have one cardigan with big sleeves, don’t really need another.

I love the finished shawl, the Faroese shape really does stay on well. And I love the yarn, in all its crispness and slight roughness. This feels like the kind of shawl my great grandmothers would have worn. Airy lace and softy delicate yarns are good for dressing up, but this is an honest, everyday working shawl. Although I wear it for working in the library, rather than the fields or mills. Ah, which reminds me …
I kniktted this ‘U’ for the Poetry Society’s Knitted Poem. They asked you to tell them your favourite poem. One of mine is Digging by Seamus Heaney

Granite Socks

Finished at last, after being on the needles for over 2 months. I don’t think I’ve ever taken so long to complete a pair of socks, they were sidelined by the pressures of various presents. I like this pattern and will probably make it again, good for man socks (just don’t tell them the name of the stitch pattern has ‘baby’ in it).

GM Mouse

Because Sparky seemed to like playing with soft toys as big as himself

Shap Blue Socks

We went to Rivington again this weekend and I got some knitting done under a tree in the Japanese garden.

Decimal

Body & sleeves finished, now just the button bands to do (ugh) and the sleeves to seam (once I’ve learned mattress stitch). I have gnawing doubts about the fit but won’t find out until it’s all blocked …. fingers crossed.

I can’t in all conscience claim that knitting your own things saves money. Even with the cheapest nastiest baby-melt you’d be struggling to make a jumper for less than you’d pay for a new one in Primark. And let’s not dwell on the economics of sock yarns. But when it comes to gift-giving, knitting makes your money go further with the addition of your time and skill and lurv *. Some things I have given to people recently ….

Made for my dear friend and unofficial chemistry tutor, because last year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded for work on green fluorescent protein, originally extracted from jellyfish (and yes, someone has made green fluorescent sheep so all-natural glow-in-the-dark yarn should be on the market soon).

turn the heel on my second bamboo sock and cast on a new pair of socks for DrM. And I am desperate to cast on a pair of Owlings, after meeting Lucyvanp’s cashmere pair at knit night. I have a single ball of alpaca from a swap, and some matching beads. When my bamboo socks are finished my Owlings are starting.

For the first 25 or so years of my knitting life, I was content with the skills I learnt from my mum and the odd book. It’s not that I stuck to simple things – I did cables and fair isle and intarstia – but I didn’t try new or different ways of doing things. Mostly I didn’t know there were different ways of doing things. Until I took up knitting again with a vengeance a couple of years ago and discovered the knitting internets, I genuinely did not know that there was any other way to knit than the way I was taught (which I now know is ‘English’ style). I had no idea there were so many different ways to cast on and cast off, and I’d never knit in the round.

Now I enjoy the challenge of learning new techniques when I need them. I’ve learnt new cast ons and cast offs, become a sock addict, taught myself to crochet, read lace and cable charts, learnt different ways to increase and decrease, and more. But one thing I’ve never done is entrelac. I just don’t particularly like the effect and so have had no desire to knit anything in it. Then last week, someone brought along a hand-knit entrelac cardigan to knitting group and asked how it was done. And while I could seen in principle how it must be done, I had to confess I didn’t know exactly.

Well now I do, for I have knit this entrelac tea cosy.

pattern: improvised, first two sets knit in the round, middle section knit flat with decreases, top section knit in the round, I-cord loopyarn: ancient dk acrylic from stashneedles: 4 mm

Can’t see me wanting to knit entrelac again, all that going back and forward and picking up stitches is a right pain and I don’t like the effect enough for it to be worth it. But at least I now know how it’s done and the cafe where we have our knit nights has a new tea cosy. Actually they have 3 new cosies because I fell out with my current wip socks and wanted some simple makes, and because it seemed to me that a cafe that’s often full of knitters really should have knitted tea cosies

And I received an amazing swap package from CodeCrafter, stuffed full of yarny chocolatey gorgeous goodness, including LittleFreak yarn, a brilliant knitting mag and the cutest project bag that she made herself.

In other news, my calorimetry love goes on. Friend liked her Christmas one in Kureyon very much and asked if I would do her a more conservatively coloured one for work, which gave me a good way to use up the bit of BfL aran left over from dad’s scarfpattern: Calorimetry by Kathryn Schoendorf (96 st, 4.5 mm needles)
yarn: Violet Green Hand-Dyed Bluefaced Leicester Aran in chocolate

And then I realised I want one too, and I haz a ball of Kureyon in the same shades as Vladi’s one, so am knitting that now ….